Critical Reading: Making Sense of Research Papers in Life Sciences and Medicine

Textbooks are designed to teach, explain and make complex information easily understood and assimilated. Research papers do the reader no such favours. Being able to understand and use primary research is an essential tool in any scientific career. This book teaches these valuable skills simply and clearly, saving hours in the long run.

Critical Reading explains how to:

• approach every paper methodically
• spot work aimed to support a pet theory
• gain confidence in questioning what you read
• be alert to bias
• use abstracts intelligently
• identify suspect experimental methods
• assess quantitative methodology
• interpret results with confidence
• draw inferences from published work.

Using extracts from published Papers in Focus, this book imparts valuable know-how to students and researchers from any biomedical or biological discipline. The text is easily read and understood and the use of key points, summaries and reference reinforces good technique.

Ben Yudkin teaches at the Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford, UK, where he runs graduate courses on critical literature interpretation and experimental techniques in molecular biology.